Heart-wrenching images have emerged, shedding light on the tragic ordeal of a two-year-old girl who perished inside a scorching SUV, abandoned by her father.

Parker Scholtes lost her life, trapped in her car seat, outside her family’s residence in Marana, a suburb of Tucson, Arizona, on a sweltering July day when temperatures soared to 109°F.

Her father, Christopher Scholtes, left her asleep for three hours in the vehicle, while he indulged in drinking beer, playing video games, and watching pornography in the comfort of their air-conditioned home.

Parker was discovered only when her mother, Erika, 37, returned from her job as an anesthesiologist at the very hospital where her daughter was rushed.

Christopher Scholtes, 38, ended his life through carbon monoxide poisoning in his car on November 5, the same day he was scheduled to begin serving a 20 to 30-year prison sentence for second-degree murder.

Crime scene photos newly obtained by the Daily Mail show tiny handprints on the inside of the window in the blue family 2023 Acura MDX.

The haunting marks on the rear driver’s side window were just inches from where Parker’s forward-facing car seat was buckled in.

Police testing found the surface temperature of the car seat was 149.1F, according to detailed incident reports by the Marana Police Department. 

On the floor below Parker’s feet was an iPad with a pink case and two tiny, child-sized pink sandals.

The window was facing west, absorbing the full brunt of the scorching sun that quickly caused the temperature inside the car to skyrocket.

The photo of the fingerprints suggests Parker may have desperately tried to claw for help as she perished in the ferocious heat.  

Another heartbreaking photo shows the small pink dress with flowers printed on it that Parker was wearing, lying on the kitchen floor and slashed open by paramedics.

Officers wrote in their reports that it was such a hot day that, as they collected evidence, they needed to take frequent breaks inside air-conditioned cars, douse themselves in cold water and call for more drinks to avoid heatstroke themselves.

‘I placed my hand on the hood of the car to check for engine heat. I noted within about a second I began to feel a burning sensation on my hand and had to pull it away from the vehicle to avoid being burned,’ one wrote. 

Scholtes told officers that the Acura was usually parked in the family’s garage, but his wife Erika had bought him a Peloton treadmill for Father’s Day three weeks earlier, which was being stored in its place.

So, he had parked the Acura in the driveway, 23ft from the front door.

Parker was trapped in the car until after 4pm when Erika arrived home from her work at Banner University Medical Center in Tucson – where, tragically, their little girl was then pronounced dead at 4.58pm.

Scholtes’s two surviving daughters described to detectives the frantic moment before the couple realized where Parker was and sprinted to the car.

‘[One of the girls] said when her mom got home she asked, “Where’s the baby?” and her dad said, “Where’s the baby!?” and ran outside,’ one officer wrote.

‘”My dad started screaming cause he walked outside and he saw that she was in the car still, her lips were purple and she wasn’t breathing.”

‘She stated Parker did not look the same. Her skin was lighter than usual, her legs were covered with black stuff, and she had chapped purple lips.

‘When they saw her mom and dad crying, they knew Parker was dead.’

Erika, an attending anesthesiologist, ran inside holding her, dialed 911 and gave Parker CPR until paramedics arrived.

Police described Parker’s dress lying on the kitchen floor, near where first responders tried in vain to revive her.

‘A pink flower dress size 3T from the kitchen floor next to the island. The dress was wet and smelled of urine. It was cut on the front from the bottom up to the chest area,’ one wrote in their report.

Scholtes, wearing a Vans cap backwards, a lip ring, and flip-flops, told police that he left Parker in the car with the engine running and the air-conditioning on because she was asleep when they arrived home.

However, he lost track of time and the engine automatically shut off after about 20 minutes – as police testing confirmed.

‘I swore she was in the house playing with her sisters like she always does. I’ve just been resting and icing, taking acetaminophen and ibuprofen for my sciatica pain right now,’ he told police, according to their reports.

Scholtes was in a single-vehicle crash in October 2019 that caused him to suffer two broken vertebrae. Though they healed and he was no longer taking prescription medication, he often used an ice pack – one of which was found on the couch.

However, the two surviving daughters told police their father had been distracted while gaming on his PlayStation 5, which was seized as evidence.

Officers wrote in their reports that the lounge room looked like someone had been doing just that.

‘The headset and controller were on the coffee table next to an open and half-empty Dr Pepper can; the can was room temperature,’ they wrote.

‘Laying on the sofa directly across from the controller were two adult socks, a pillow, and a blanket. The pillow was positioned so that someone could see the television.’

Analysis of his phone also found that Scholtes was searching for clothing sales and watching adult videos while his daughter died.

Officers wrote that after Parker was rushed to hospital, Scholtes began pacing the house and turned on the shower, saying he wanted to rinse off and go to the hospital. 

Police told him he could not take a shower as he needed to be processed for evidence, and he ‘seemed frustrated by this’.

‘I’m being treated like a murderer, I just lost my baby,’ he told them, according to their reports. He ‘continually’ repeated his desire to shower and was told he could not.

At another point that day, Scholtes went under the crime scene tape surrounding the Acura and tried to get inside until police pulled him away.

He said he wanted to get items from inside the car before it was impounded, but was told everything inside was being seized as evidence. He only walked away when Erika told him to get inside the house.

Scholtes’s surviving daughters said their father was ‘bawling’ all night after Parker’s death and ‘saying it was all his fault’.

However, ‘[one of the girls] said it was not his fault, it was actually a “little accident”.’

The girls appeared to have been coached by their parents on what to tell police, as they told them they ‘needed to tell them that he is a good dad and it was just an accident’.

‘[She] said her big sister, mom, grandma, uncles, her other grandma, and her “papa” all told her that her dad was a good dad and that it was an accident,’ police wrote.

Erika made the same claim when it was her turn to be interviewed, saying her husband was ‘having a really hard time with it’.

‘This is a really terrible mistake, is what it comes down to,’ she told police, according to the report.

‘She said he was feeling responsible and guilty about what happened.’

Erika claimed ‘things have been really good for her and Chris recently’ because he quit drinking alcohol three months earlier. 

‘She stated that there was never any abuse, but if he would drink when they went on a vacation, it just was not a great time.’

However, Scholtes had not quit drinking at all – though he may have hidden his continued consumption from his wife.

Security cameras caught him shoplifting three cans of beer from a convenience store on his way home before leaving Parker in the car, one of which he discreetly drank in a gas station toilet. 

Erika continued to stand by her husband up to his suicide – petitioning the court for his release and for permission to take a holiday to Maui, and buying a stunning $1million four-bedroom, 2,369sq ft Italian villa-style family home in Phoenix in April.

The killer dad rejected a plea deal in March that would have seen him serve up to ten years behind bars.

Just six months later, Scholtes had no choice but to accept a far worse deal to plead guilty to second-degree murder and be jailed for 20 to 30 years without parole.

But he was allowed to stay out on bail until November 5 when he would be taken into custody, and used that time to plan his suicide.

Scholtes was ‘found deceased in his car, which was parked in the garage’, police said.